Yesterday, one of Jezebel's brother sites, Gawker, wrote about "Debauchette," one of the several prostitutes who appeared on the Diane Sawyer 20/20 special about working girls. Even though Debauchette's voice was altered and her appearance masked, her mother recognized her because of the idiosyncratic cadence of her voice and her gestures. "I listened to what you had to say in the interview and I expect you feel you have thought all of this through," Debauchette's mom said. (All things considered, a reasonably calm response.) Karly Kirchner of sex-worker site Bound, Not Gagged recounts a similarly accepting response from her mom, but adds that she wants her mother to start reading her posts on the blog.

Perhaps those posts will lead Ms. Kirchner's mother to a deeper understanding of the oldest profession and her daughter's reasons for choosing it. But, says Morgan Winter on the Utne Reader's website, "There seems to be two basic motivations for writing about one's tenure as a hooker, neither educational. The prostitute either wants to glorify or vilify the industry and its consumers. Either of these seems simplistic and disingenuous. After all, not only are we talking about the oldest profession, we're also trying to understand arguably the most complicated physiological aspect of nature—sex—through books about themes that, if authored by anybody other than former prostitutes, would fall under the 'teen' section in the local library." Even with a more nuanced view of prostitution, I can't imagine any mother would be particularly thrilled to discover that her daughter was a hooker. I got an awkwardly scolding phone call from my mother when I wrote about foreskins. I can't even imagine what she'd say if I told her I touched them for a living!